My Film Bag goes live with patient films online

Melbourne-based radiology specialist Zed Technologies has gone live in its first practice with its new My Film Bag app, which allows patients to view their radiology images online.

Rolled out a fortnight ago by Melbourne's Imaging @ Olympic Park, the app is also due to go live at Port Macquarie X-ray in NSW next week as a way to test it with patients who have to travel out of the area to see specialists.

My Film Bag is available as both a web app and as a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, and has been developed by Zed Technologies' Ross Wright and Ronald Li as a way to allow patients to view their own images and to share them with doctors without having to cart around films or CDs.

Mr Wright said Imaging @ Olympic Park and Port Macquarie X-ray are paying for the app on behalf of their patients. “Their reasoning behind it is that it's a value-added service but there's also a small saving on film,” he said. “It was something that they thought some of their patients would appreciate, being mobile and reasonably tech savvy patients.”

In addition to allowing patients easy access to their scans while travelling and the ability to share them with multiple healthcare providers, another obvious market to explore is new parents to allow them to store and view ultrasound images. However, the company plans to initially market the app to radiology providers before individual patients.

The app is the first consumer venture for the start-up company, which has also developed a DICOM viewer in use in hospitals as well as a mobile app that can be used with Medinexus to allow GPs and specialists to view DICOM images from within their desktop software or mobile device.

Mr Wright and Mr Li are currently spending time at the muru-D start-up accelerator in Sydney, which has been sponsored by Telstra to encourage innovation in the start-up scene.

Mr Wright said the duo was using the opportunity to continue to develop its market, scale its product and talk to investors.